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https://theconversation.com/european-nations-have-no-choice-but-to-raise-retirement-ages-our-case-study-shows-why-268412>
"In early October 2025, with his political future hanging by a thread, France’s
resigned-and-reappointed prime minister Sébastien Lecornu pledged to suspend
unpopular pension reforms until 2027, when presidential elections will be held.
Socialist MPs declared victory. The French business community groaned. The S&P
downgraded France’s credit rating, citing budget concerns.
With France kicking inevitable reforms at least two years down the road, and
many European countries facing pension crises of their own, it is worth
considering how to design pension reforms that are sustainable, equitable and
politically viable.
One striking feature of the debate over pension reform in Europe is how well
understood and extensively documented its root problems are. Europe’s
population is aging. The birth rate is declining. Life expectancy is growing
ever longer. Fewer people are contributing to fund public systems that will
have more people drawing money from them for longer periods of time. At the
same time, technological disruption is reducing the share of labour income in
gross domestic product.
Since most of Europe’s pay-as-you-go systems were designed when demographics
were entirely different, they must be adjusted to reflect the current reality.
We accept this in other areas like education, where we rezone school districts
and trim new school construction to reflect smaller numbers of children in our
neighbourhoods. But any talk of adjusting the retirement age is met with
thousands of furious protesters filling the streets of Paris, Madrid or
Brussels.
In France, it’s also important to put the reform in perspective: it proposed
raising the retirement age by two years, to 64. Denmark adjusts its retirement
age every five years in line with life expectancy, and approved raising it to
70 by 2040 from its current 67 earlier in the year.
Pension reforms keep failing because the politics overrules the economics.
Demographic transitions are predictable, their costs are measurable, and the
policy tools needed to address their consequences already exist. But reforms
collapse when they collide with electoral incentives and public mistrust.
How to move beyond these problems? Rather than looking at only one item, such
as retirement age, we propose a multidimensional approach that addresses
expenditures as well as contributions and compensates those who are initially
impacted by the reforms. Spain served as our case study, but the lessons hold
true for many European countries, France among them."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
